Dan Slott sadly returns to Spider-Man

One of the worst of the woke writers who was ever allowed the job of writing Spidey in the past has been rehired by Marvel for the job - undoubtably with C.B. Cebulski's approval - and Comic Book Club Live's making such an irritating fuss over it:

Dan Slott left Marvel towards the beginning of 2025, burning all his bridges with his long-time compatriots to follow his dream of writing Superman for DC Comics. Just kidding, it was amicable, and in fact Slott has already signed up for at least one Marvel project (that would be Fantastic Four: First Foes). And now he’s returning to Spider-Man, just in time for a brand new movie with the new ongoing series Spectacular Spider-Man: Brand New Day. [...]

Slott was instrumental in crafting the original Brand New Day storyline back in 2008, which followed up on the controversial “One More Day” storyline. That erased the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane, but opened up the door for Peter to date such iconic characters as Carlie Cooper, Shay [Editor’s Note: Does she have a last name? Can we check on that?], and I want to say Captain Marvel, maybe? That can’t be right.

It's pretty apparent where the writer stands on the issue of Mary Jane and the marriage. This article is so blatant. Just how have characters like Carlie and Shay become "iconic" overnight, especially when sales were nothing special even back then? If he sees nothing wrong with doing it all at MJ's expense, that's one more reason why Slott's return to Spidey should be avoided.

And this wasn't the only puff piece to come out recently, dishing out apologia in Slott's favor. There was also ComicBook's coverage of the news:

Marvel Comics has just announced that it is returning to one of Spider-Man’s most controversial storylines. Spider-Man has been around since almost the start of Marvel Comics, and there have been some polarizing storylines, to put it lightly. Things like The Clone Wars and One More Day remain among the most hated Spider-Man storylines ever created. However, some storylines get lumped in with those polarizing tales, including the infamous Brand New Day story that followed Spider-Man’s deal with Mephisto in One More Day. It is that classic timeframe that Marvel is returning to, with a new series that Marvel claims will affect today’s storylines.

Marvel announced that Spectacular Spider-Man: Brand New Day debuts in May, with Dan Slott returning to the title with artist Marcus To (X-Force). The storyline sees Dan Slott returning to the story in which he started his long and successful run on Spider-Man comics, and he has a chance to tell a new story that will play into what is happening in Spider-Man books today.

Spider-Man Creator Talks New Brand New Day Storyline

Dan Slott has written more Spider-Man comics than almost anyone in history, proving that his run on Brand New Day was the start of something special, and not as bad as some fans might remember. This comes down to the writer’s love for the character. “Spider-Man is my favorite character in all of fiction. Heart on my sleeve here—I love writing Spider-Man,” Slott said in the press release. “We’re going to reveal hidden secrets and plant explosive seeds that will pay off and affect what’s happening in Spider-Man’s world today! These will be stories that matter and that will have major consequences!

Anybody who's going to be as contemptuous of Mary Jane as even Slott was has no love for Peter either, and the way they repeatedly dangled carrots was atrocious. It's no accident the columnist made such a laughable statement. But it's also sad how tons of money were completely wasted on these stultifying directions taken. And "reveal" secrets? They already forced said secrets onto the cast members in Sins Past; we don't need more of this tripe.

The new Spectacular Spider-Man: Brand New Day series will see Slott returning to the Brand New Day storyline, which ran from 2008 to 2012 and saw the creator tasked with relaunching Spider-Man’s story after the controversial One More Day, which was a storyline by J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada. Slott did the best he could with the cards he was dealt and actually delivered a series of great Spider-Man stories for hundreds of issues, including introducing Superior Spider-Man.

The entire plan for Slott was to relaunch Spider-Man in a new world where no one knew his identity, Harry Osborn was alive again, and Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane never happened. While that latter event is what most fans look at the story with distaste, Slott delivered some incredible stories, and this is the canon that Spider-Man lives in to this day in Marvel Comics. The idea of going back to this time period and introducing something fans have never seen before, while setting up some new future stories, is very exciting news.

Once again, somebody downplays the extent of the damage, to say nothing of failure to admit it was all useless. But it's clear where he stands regarding Mary Jane. The chances Marvel will reverse the fate of the Spider-marriage are slim, but if they do, it'll be insulting to the intellect that a writer as dreadful as Slott would be given the task, much like how Brian Bendis, IIRC, got the task of resurrecting Mockingbird in his Avengers writing. After all, that was obviously an attempt to persuade audiences to validate a bad writer, and such psychology is simply reprehensible as it's disrespectful to the audience, after all the harm Slott and Bendis caused back in the day.

And even if the Spider-marriage is restored, when you have leftists like Slott and Bendis around, you can't expect them to avoid lacing their stories with some kind of woke garbage, no matter what direction they take. After all, that's what led to J. Michael Straczynski's pretentious run on Spidey during 2001-07.

Japanese survey reveals many animators dissatisfied with the wages

2 months ago, the Asahi Shimbun reported wages in the anime industry aren't all that different from what the USA cartoon industry may have been said to pay in past decades:

A new government probe has exposed deep frustration among the artists who power Japan’s animation and film industries, where low pay and opaque business practices contribute to unstable working conditions.

An overwhelming 89.4 percent of film directors and staff, along with 52.1 percent of animators, said they were not satisfied with their current pay, according to a survey released on Dec. 24 by the Fair Trade Commission.

Many respondents complained that their compensation fell short of rising living costs and that the fees offered for their work were inherently low.

Some also reported that negotiations either failed to produce acceptable rates or were not available at all.

Yes, that's a shame, because for all we know, failure to pay well could one day lead to the downfall of the Japanese animation industry if they don't pay their employees as much as they're expected to produce. Even back in the USA, there's similar problems that have undoubtably come to head after so many years, and who knows, even that may bring down American animation one day, though let's not forget that, when any studio starts pushing leftist political propaganda into their cartoons, they can't be surprised if they don't do so well in the end, and as a result, the studios may not make enough money to continue paying their animators as well as they'd like. Yet depending how woke the animators are, it may not be easy to feel sorry for them if they don't make the fortunes they're hoping to accumulate.

For now, maybe Japanese studios should consider making an effort to raise the wages for their employees. And if video game producers suffer similar problems, maybe they should follow suit.

Some history of an early Fantastic Four issue's story and of Lee/Kirby, that may have unfortunately been exploited for political propaganda

A writer for City News in Canberra, Australia, tells about the 51st issue of Fantastic Four, but there's suggestions this item was written as a stealth political statement. First, here's something he tells about team leader Mr. Fantastic:

The thing is, nestled among those treasures, and appearing in Australian newsagencies in early August 1966, at exactly the same time I first appeared too, was the little known number 51.

It’s worth a small fraction of the others and is a lame and ordinary 20-page story introducing a villain (the evil scientist Ricardo Jones) who was so uninteresting that he dies at the end of the story and was never seen again.

From the moment I first read it, it is my favourite comic book of all time and I read it about once a year, whenever my wife rereads Pride and Prejudice. It’s got fewer bonnets but more explosions so, you know, swings and roundabouts.

The story is simple. In every issue since number 1, Reed Richards, famed scientist and the leader of the FF, promises but fails to cure his best buddy Ben Grimm from being a monster made from rocks, known as The Thing.

I think a moment must be taken to point out that Mr. Fantastic didn't promise or practice curing the Thing in virtually every issue at the time, and certainly not within 2-3 decades of its debut, so why is this being exaggerated? That the writer seems to be putting down the story despite suggestions to the contrary is also galling. Here's more:

The story begins with Ben being so frustrated at never getting cured that he falls in with the Evil Scientist, who is jealous of Reed’s fame and fortune.

The scientist successfully turns Ben back into a normal man. Ben races to his girlfriend’s house to show off his normality and finally propose. Evil scientist is turned into the rock monster himself and impersonates The Thing, his plan being to destroy the hated rock-star scientist Reed Richards. [...]

Classic comics melodrama demands that when the evil bloke dies, Ben, about to propose to his girlfriend in his handsome human body, instantly turns back into the ugly Thing and fails to pop the question. Alicia, we know, doesn’t care what he looks like and loves him for him, but he never sees it.

When I was 11, life was often hard. I read that comic 20 times and felt such shame that I related more to the evil scientist than to Reed and Ben, our heroes.

I understood his loneliness and anger so much better than their easy success, belonging and having a best friend. I loved the redemption that could be gained from a single act.

Kindness to me is finding all those people who are behaving like the evil scientist, blaming everything for things they cannot grasp, and showing them all the love and respect we can, to open their own hearts.

People who have undergone unfair treatment, fear, and despair and seek recognition or refuge in our modern Australia – people who’ve been here for six years or 60,000 – there’s plenty here who need our love today more than ever.

But is there room for people who follow bad ideologies/religions and commit terrible crimes stemming from that? I get this strange feeling this was written as a form of apologia for Islam's entrance into Oz, and if it was meant for that purpose, that's very disturbing, considering all the damage that occurred in decades since till now. It's also disturbingly worrisome how the columnist implies he's sympathetic to people who commit crimes, and raises another troubling issue - there seem to be quite a few people like these who created a situation that got worse over the years where they pivot to loving the villains more, presumably because heroes are "boring"?!? That's practically what led to Hollywood glamorizing crime. Just what are people like these thinking? Is this how they thank Lee/Kirby for all their hard work? And just what "easy success" did Reed and Ben have? Considering the former failed several times to fully restore the latter to his human form for long, that's not exactly what I'd call success. Also, Reed had fallouts with wife Susan Storm, and while they did eventually mend fences, the whole notion everything was rosy in the FF's series up to the early 2000s is colossally exaggerated by these propagandists. Also, opening your heart to somebody who could follow an ideology built upon evil and oppression is naive and dangerous.

The above column, unfortunately, led to another one that appears to have been written even more noticeably for said apologia goals. First though:

How much of the resultant work was Lee and how much was Kirby, is a furiously debated topic in comic book circles. But what is clear is that it needed both of them to make it special.

Sadly, as the years passed, Lee would claim sole credit for the Fantastic Four, framing Kirby as simply an artist-for-hire. Kirby was deeply hurt and eventually left Marvel for DC. Fantastic Four continued under Lee and other artists, but the spark was gone.

And this is little more than another subtle putdown, when they make it sound like Kirby was the only artist who ever gave it energy. What about John Buscema, John Byrne, Walt Simonson, Carlos Pacheco and goodness knows what other artists were involved up to the turn of the century? Anybody who's going to minimize the impact of FF the way both columnists have done is not writing these history pieces altruistically. I think it's a shame Lee and Kirby fell apart, but what the writer says in regards to the entertainment value going forward is still no excuse. And now, here's another clue this article was meant more for propaganda purposes:

Like Lennon and McCartney, the creative rift between Lee and Kirby was never fully resolved before their deaths. Which brings us back to Antonio’s characteristic question about kindness. How should two big egos work together?

While healthy to have, egos should never be left untempered. We know this since Renaissance times when the cloistered cathedrals of Europe interacted, often turbulently, with the polymathic Islamic world.

Gee, this sounds an awful lot like somebody's trying to make the Islamic world look far better in every way, at the expense of say, the Israeli world's innovations. Naturally, he never gets into what innovations or polymathism the Muslim world allegedly produced, when more honest research would make clear that's not literally the case. And is he implying the Christian church wrongly attacked the Islamic world, but not the other way around? Wow, this practically obscures persecution of Christians in Nigeria. The columnist should be ashamed. Towards the end of the City News column, here's what's additionally fishy:

I was 16 and saw a classifieds ad for “a box of Marvel comics”. Travelling by train to Strathfield, I walked several blocks to be met by a guy who explained that his uncle (a single man) had died and that they were selling his house contents.

What emerged were, not one, but several boxes of comics – a complete run of Fantastic Four from issue 22 to 116, plus other ’60s Marvel titles, all in excellent condition.

I can’t remember exactly what I paid – perhaps $100, which was a lot for a 16-year-old at the time – but I do remember the crazed, Joker-like, grin on my face as I shoved a fistful of $20 notes into the seller’s hand. It took two arduous trips to get them home and they’ve been with me ever since.

When I look at them now, I like to imagine that dead uncle smiling at me from above, pleased that his collection is still being loved and read, rather than sealed in a vault, awaiting a Sotheby’s sale. Some pretty strange teamwork, that’s for sure, but the world works better with strange teams.

Which is in no way a segue to my normal political milieu, to cheekily encourage a Greens/Liberals partnership. Mind you…

Ah, how fascinating. Sounds like this must be some stealth leftist propaganda as well, which only dampens the impact of the comics segment even more. And begs the question - was this article intended as comics nostalgia, or as political propaganda?

Some so-called historians sure know how to exploit the creations of people they may not like and insult everbody's intellect, all for the sake of advancing their ambiguous political goals. With the worst part being when they're not willing to be clear and state their exact beliefs. Such people, as a result, have no business commenting on comics history.

Actor who played Superman in 1990s TV show may have been blacklisted from convention over his conservative leanings

Pajamas Media recently reported that actor Dean Cain, who played Superman in the 1993-97 Lois & Clark TV series, may have been banned from GalaxyCon over his right-wing standings:

Superman actor Dean Cain is exposing the truth about an attempt to blacklist him in Hollywood for openly expressing his conservative political beliefs. Cain is best known for portraying the Man of Steel in the hit 1990s series Lois & Clark, where he embodied the Last Son of Krypton for an entire generation of fans, myself included. Don’t get me wrong — my two favorite actors to play the character remain Christopher Reeve and Tom Welling — but Cain did a fantastic job bridging the gap between the two and bringing Superman back to television.

Without Lois & Clark, there would be no Smallville. Cain deserves respect for keeping the franchise relevant at a time when the Man of Tomorrow had begun to fall in popularity, regardless of his political beliefs. Unfortunately, liberals often seem incapable of seeing beyond a person’s politics. I consume plenty of art from people I vehemently disagree with. I still respect many of those artists as people, even when their values directly oppose mine. It can be done.

Cain took to social media this week and shared a screenshot of an email he received from an employee at GalaxyCon, a company that organizes fan conventions, explaining why the company would not work with him. The email cited a difference in “values” as the reason.

“In regard to Dean Cain, although I have a soft spot in my heart because he sent me an autographed postcard in the mail when I was like 10 years old, GalaxyCon’s values don’t align with Dean,” the message stated. “[Redacted] also reaches out to us quite often, but we are also going to pass on him.”

The conservative actor publicly addressed the message and accused GalaxyCon of using vague “values” language to justify blacklisting him over ideological differences. In his post, he wrote, “This is how they try to blacklist…” followed by an eye-roll emoji.

I think this makes for a good reason to boycott the convention if they're going to let their leftist ideological outlooks govern their whole MO. It also explains perfectly why right-wing businesses have to start establishing their own conventions, and not rely solely upon what leftists set up. If they'd get that through their heads already, we probably wouldn't be in such dire straits.

According to Fox News, Cain appears to have contacted the official director of Galaxycon, and they may have reconciled:

Cain said he does not fault Sarah, GalaxyCon’s vice president of talent, personally, describing her as a messenger rather than the ultimate decision-maker.

"I don’t blame Sarah for being the messenger here," Cain said. "The owner of GalaxyCon is named Mike Broder. I’d love to hear his explanation re: my values."

That explanation, Cain said, eventually came after he spoke directly with Broder.

"Spoke with Mike — appreciate the conversation," Cain said. "We agreed to disagree on certain things — but it turns out, our values aren’t so far apart."

Cain said the exchange reinforced his belief that conversation — not exclusion — is the way forward.

Mr. Broder may have retreated from any blacklist he attempted, but what if he pulls it again on another performer or comics creator in the future? He has to publicly address this on TV or radio, because this cannot go on, and must cease. I'd seen news in the past year since Donald Trump's election that there's people who want wokeness to end, and they're right. If GalaxyCon doesn't want a boycott of their convention, they'd do well to set a starting example of one that doesn't take that kind of path, and a good way to build confidence is to invite a busload of conservative figures to their upcoming panels.

One of the reasons I find this news so reprehensible is because Cain once produced a documentary about the Armenian genocide committed by Turkey's Islamic Ottoman empire during WW1, and visited Israel in the past decade, and here Mr. Broder's thanking him by trying to blacklist him? Does that mean Mr. Cain can't talk about how say, a role like Superman taught him a thing or two about altruism for real life? Well if one's not allowed to raise serious issues like those at an establishment like GalaxyCon, then what's the whole point of the convention? All they'd be doing is setting a double-standard on political issues. I should hope Cain's conversation with Broder will prevent any such hypocrisy in the future.

Much too late for Alex Ross to work on a new Marvel project

Over 3 decades ago, artist Alex Ross worked on Marvels with Kurt Busiek, which was a form of nostalgia. Now, the Hollywood Reporter's announced that Ross is returning to do a new item for them, a few years after he'd worked on another project starring the Fantastic Four:

Comic book painter Alex Ross burst out onto the comics scene in the mid-1990s when he produced a one-two punch of electrifying and celebrated works, Marvels for Marvel Comics and Kingdom Come for DC Comics. For a good chunk of this century, however, he has become known mostly for his lush and colorfully vivid covers for Marvel.

Readers were treated to the full Ross experience when he returned to writing and drawing interiors for his widely-praised 2022 graphic novel Fantastic Four: Full Circle.

And while that was the first Ross book in years, fans don’t have to wait as long for his next opus, one that could be as ambitious and impactful as his classic works.

Ross has written and illustrated Marvel Dimensions, an all-new 112-page graphic novel that Abrams ComicArts, in partnership with Marvel Comics, will release in September.

Much of the story is being kept under wraps, but it’s meant to be both a tour of the classic Marvel Universe and something much more expansive. It’s said to be a work that experiments in both art and form, and could introduce upwards of 200 new characters, or at least that many variations of characters.

“It’s meant to be as bonkers a ride for the reader as it could possibly be,” says Ross teasingly to The Hollywood Reporter. “You’re getting one kind of entertainment, and then it changes on you midstream and then you’re getting a different art style suddenly, and then you’re wondering, ‘Where’s this going?’ And then the format changes within the book itself, a mid-book format change. All these things hopefully seem to unify and combine and come back together, but it’s meant to be a wild ride that is throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at you.”

What if it turned out any and all of the "new" characters they speak of were written for the sake of woke brownie points? Not to mention that, years after continuity was ruined and turned incomprehensible, it's pretty rich to tempt everyone with the claim Dimensions will be a tour of the "classic" universe, even as the modern one desecrates all that and worse. A story dealing with the old universe is no substitute for a respectable tale set in modern times.

Even under C.B. Cebulski, there's been only so much that's remained damaged, it does little good to market a project like this, when a single product alone isn't reason enough to resume reading their output. They vehemently refuse to restore the Spider-marriage and Iron Man's parents as biological ones, or quit producing the mess they've made of X-Men and Avengers, and then they actually think we're going to let go of our principles just because they promote a project based on "nostalgia"? No, it's no simple matter at all.

I do appreciate that Ross firmly and wisely refused any part of DC's Identity Crisis over 2 decades ago. But that's exactly why he shouldn't be associating with the Big Two based on what people run them now, which will not change so long as they're under conglomerate ownership. Why, does he even believe this'll sell millions years after rising prices gave many customers pause? It's delusional to believe Dimensions will be much different sales-wise.

Some coverage of a Cleveland specialty store that's out of touch with the real picture

The Land did some coverage of a comics store in the Cleveland area, and the way they describe all this is sadly not looking at the modern picture of where mainstream comicdom sunk down to:

Carol & John’s Comic Book Shop feels less like a retail space and more like a place where stories are handed down. Some people come in looking for something specific, some people come in just to browse, but everyone leaves with something. A kid walks around looking at a Spider-Man book, a longtime customer flips through new releases on a table in the center of the store, each one of them there for the same reason. They’re a part of a community.

This is part of why comic books endure. They survive because we share stories with each other. It is a part of how we got to where we are culturally. Comic book heroes are America’s mythology. Much like England has its Arthurian myths and Greece has its Hercules, we have Superman, and places like Carol & John’s are the reason why our heroes have endured for generations.

But do we have these creations appearing in modern stories that are readable anymore? Sadly, quality's gone down so badly, with Superman's downfall in story merit just the beginning. Yes, comics as a medium can survive in some form or other, but what about IPs owned by conglomerates? Why doesn't that matter?

For Dudas, the story stretches back even further, to a great-grandfather who used comic books as a bridge into a new country.

“My great-grandfather was a Polish immigrant,” he said. “He could speak English, but he couldn’t read or write it. So he would learn from the context by reading comic books.”

When his great-grandfather died, the comics were left to the kid who cared. Dudas was 6 or 7 years old and studied them closely. By the time he was 12, he was working in a comic shop. Then, later, he and his mother opened their own.

“Between my great-grandfather and my daughters, it’s five generations of comic books in the city of Cleveland,” Dudas said. “I could talk to my great-grandfather about Superman, and I could talk to my daughter about Superman.” It’s a bridge that ties them.

That inherited understanding is what turns stories into cultural touchstones. Spider-Man and Captain America aren’t just characters. They’re mirrors. These stories persist because their morality transcends eras and they answer the same questions for every generation. Questions about responsibility, sacrifice and how tough it can be to be a righteous person when it is so easy to give in and quit.

That, alas, is what modern leftists writers did, in a way. This part completely obscures the disaster Cap's stories became in 2002, after the regular series was cancelled and a Marvel Knights series replaced it, which turned out to be apologia for Islamic terrorism. It was so stunningly vile, and quickly degenerated into even more aimless propaganda that seemed more about blaming America than actually solving problems like barbarism in modernity. IIRC, that series was easily the shortest lived of the Knights imprint, being jettisoned after 2 years, but the damage that began there was sadly never fixed, and successive editors/writers/artists never tried to avoid the kind of pettiness that first brought down Cap as an icon, seeing how later, there'd be stories where Steve Rogers was repeatedly replaced by other characters, some of whom were diversity-pandering tokens, and the worst moment was when Cap was made to say "hail Hydra". And Joe Quesada never apologized for what he enabled.

I think it's impressive the store owner's great-grandfather learned reading from comics, but the way this article airbrushes the bigger picture concerning the moral collapse of mainstream comicdom is very appalling.

I asked John whether comics had always shaped who he was, or if it was something that he discovered about himself later in life.

“I’m a better man for it,” he said. “My morality was developed around it.”

But was that decades ago? Because not many people seem to have grown attached to the creations since, and morality isn't developed based on the newer stories post-2000, based on the defeatist politics and ideologies they fell victim to since.

On Free Comic Book Day, thousands of people pass through the doors, and tens of thousands of comics are given away. The store provides free vendor space for local artists, hosts cosplay groups, and runs charity events that have helped generate more than 200,000 meals for the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Free Comic Book Day is scheduled for May 2 this year.

On a Saturday, standing in the middle of the shop, that story becomes easy to read. Comic books endure because we need heroes. Not perfect ones, but flawed ones who try the way we try. We pass these stories down because they help us explain who we are and who we want to be.

“I believe in the hobby,” Dudas said. “I believe this hobby makes you a better person.”

I'm afraid the hobby alone doesn't do that. It depends on if you understand any of the messages clearly, show the guts to tackle challenging issues, which wasn't what the Knights volume of Cap did, seeing how it followed a leftist Blame-America narrative. Why, even reading literature alone doesn't make one a better person, if said literature happens to be built on negativity. It's a shame we seem to have here folks too full of themselves to show the courage to admit that, like Hollywood movie production, even comicdom's fallen victim to political correctness that won't be fixed by painting a superficial picture of the hobby that doesn't acknowledge what's gone wrong over the years. Also, have they considered what a disturbing emphasis on villainy turned up in the past 2 decades, sometimes at the heroes' expense? That kind of approach is also what brought down Cap, and makes it hard to believe Marvel's staff at the time respected heroism. Comicdom may continue to survive, but if store owners aren't willing to raise all the relevant issues, all because they may worry publishers won't do business with them, then they've failed again to solve anything.

News about artist Dave Brown

For Black History Month, Mid-Michigan Now/Fox 25 gave a report about how comics artist Dave Brown built up his career:

Detroit artist Dave Brown has transformed his lifelong passion for art into a successful independent comic book career. Growing up in a creative family, Brown was inspired by his father, an artist who specialized in landscapes and portraits. "I always wanted to draw," Brown said. "I started drawing Ninja Turtles... I had the love for it and kept going."

Brown honed his skills at Wayne State University and through years of experience on the convention circuit. His wife encouraged him to showcase his work at conventions, which led to collaborations with local writers and creators. "I can start doing this myself really," Brown said.

As an independent artist, Brown writes, illustrates, and self-publishes his own comic books, covering genres from family stories to horror and sci-fi. He emphasizes the importance of representation, especially for his sons. "I never really seen a black superhero that stood out," he said.

On this, I would like to make a crucial point that, without building on merit, of course nothing's going to stand out, and today, after all the damage done to Marvel/DC by cynical editors and publishers, even white superheroes don't stand out anymore, because almost nobody cares about the whole genre anymore. And if representation matters, how come nobody seems to go by nationality? Don't countries like Cameroon have what to draw inspiration from?

So good luck to Mr. Brown with his career, and he's doing the right thing by staying close to the indie world, but once again, we have an example of somebody who's not building an argument or vision based on the importance of merit. And seriously, I think it's a shame if he's working in the horror genre, because there's far too much of that these days. The sci-fi and family genres are what matter more.